13 July 2017, Hauptwerk recording with Piotr Grabowski

A few years ago, after I learned about Hauptwerk, the virtual organ system, and had downloaded a few organs, for which I paid a fee, I saw a website from Poland with organs for free, although which only a donation is requested. I downloaded an organ (German organ, in Poland), which worked well, so I sent the site a $50 donation, the same amount I had paid for the organ I downloaded of Brescia, from Sonus Paradisi, a commercial company.  I continued to visit the site, found at piotrgrabowski.pl, and downloaded more organs, making more donations.  I knew from the site that the name of the person who was responsible was Piotr Grawbowski, and that he was or had been a student at the Chopin Conservatory in Warsaw, and that the first organ he recorded was at the Conservatory (I haven't downloaded that one, because it is dry.)  When I sent him donations he responded with a personal thank you note, so I knew there was a real person there.  Anyway, when we came to Italy and I went to the Mascioni organ factory, Andrea (Andrew in Italian) Mascioni, the owner, asked me if I wanted to be his representative for selling organs in the US, and I have been working with him and his marketing manager, Andrew Joliffe, who is from England, but lives in Paris.  Myrna and I have visited the Mascioni factory in Azzio, about 90 minutes north and almost on the Swiss border, three times now, and I took my laptop computer with Hauptwerk and showed Andrea how it worked, as he had never seen Hauptwerk.  He was impressed with how easy it is to use and how realistic it sounds.  I told him that if he wants to sell organs in the US, organists there need to be familiar with his brand and that if he had organs on Hauptwerk, that organists could learn about them. So I had an idea and emailed Piotr in Poland and asked him if he wanted to come to Italy to record.  This started the process that ended up with Piotr, who is 27 years old, driving his red car first to Gubliasco, Switzerland to record one of Mascioni's recent organs on Wed. night and the one in Azzio, Italy (which I have played) on Thurs.  I wanted to go watch/help (I told him I could play the notes while he recorded) and he wanted me to, although I later learned he can do most of it himself.  I ended up not going to Switzerland because our car does not have a €40 Swiss sticker, although President Allen told me I could drive another mission car which does.  We went to Azzion last evening and were able to have the experience of meeting Piotr and watching the process of recording an organ for Hauptwerk. Here are a few pics:

Leaving the mission office at 5 pm, our GPS took us through Varese, a city in which we have missionaries (we have been there), and over a high mountain (reminded me of Mt. Graham).  We were worried if we were going to the right place, but otherwise enjoyed the beautiful drive through the forest.  It is much more like Switzerland than Italy--perhaps there is more money, from the houses and cars we saw, etc.  We dropped down into Azzio, a town of only a few hundred people, from the opposite side we have twice been to.  We passed a little church, which was open, from which we could see the organ factory (but had not driven past it because we came in the other end of town).  I went in and found
  
a little pipe organ over the door.

With a little one manual console near the altar up front.  I opened the case, but the "on" switch needed a key (Mascioni organs generally have keys), but I did not see the Mascioni logo.  So there are two two churches within a quarter mile, on either side of the Mascioni factory in Azzio.

So, having 45 minutes to spare before 8 pm, when we agreed to meet at the other church for recording, we drove to this nearby restaurant, to which we have now eaten three times.

Myrna had a salad and I had a prosciuto cotto (cooked ham) with funghi (mushroom) pizza, which was pretty good.

Then we went to the church in Azzio, built before 1,000 AD, where we met Piotr in the parking lot and helped him carry in his microphone stands, etc.  Andrew and two of his workers were in the church, starting to test the organ to make sure everything was okay before it was recorded--they did't want it to sound bad or out of tune.

They found the pipes of the Trombone (reed) stop to be out of tune and one didn't play.

They pulled the sick pipe from it's hole

And Andrea looked at it, blew on it, and it still would't work, so they called his zio (uncle) who is the "reed master" (we had seen him in the shop on a previous visit voicing reeds).  He came within 5 minutes (must live close) and took the pipe apart and found that

a beetle had gone down into the pipe, had died and dried, and was blocking the reed from beating. Zio put it back together and the pipe played fine.
 
All the while Piotr was setting up his microphones on the tall stands he brought.  

He was checking the quality of the sound coming through the mikes.  (He mostly played "O Sacred Head Now Wounded.") Then he sat at the computer and asked me to play on all the various stops.  I mostly played "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet."  Myrna was sitting all this time in the back of the church.  I told Piotr that I liked a lot of room reverb (wet sound) in the organ, and so, after talking with Andrea and moving the mikes around, he moved one of the sets back (from the organ) about 10 feet, which, I think improved the sound.  He used 4 mikes, and got beautiful 4 channel surround sound, which I heard from his headphones.

He used an Apple laptop and what looked like very high quality recording equipment.  His headphones did not have a brand name on them, but were much better quality than any I have every listened to.  I will email him when I get home and ask about them, maybe I can get some.  Of course, the quality of the headphones makes all the difference in the world as to what you can hear.

The console is very comfortable to play, even though the bench isn't adjustable.

The keys themselves are light colored wood (as opposed to bone, which Ruffatti uses), and the sharps are black ebony.

I wanted to record/remember the stops--these are on the left and control the upper manual and pedals.

These are on the right and are for the lower manual and a coupler to bring the stops from the upper manual (II) to the bottom (I).  The Sesqualtera is made of two ranks (Nazard, 2 2/3, and Tierce, 1 3/5, which are a 6th apart), and when the stop is pulled to the middle position only one pipe sounds.  This would otherwise make two stop sliders.  Sliding the stops, instead of pulling them, is very Italian and also works well with the mechanical action Mascioni used for this organ.  They also make electric action.

We could get a good look at the action when the sides were open for tuning the reeds--this is the right side, showing the stop pullers (horizontal slats) and a wind carrying tube (red painted wood).

This is on the left side, showing the stop for the tremolo (tremulant or vibrato), which, when pulled allows air to flow into the small bellows and a wheel, like a tiny water wheel, inside causes it to move back and forth so the air flowing through the pipes shakes, creating a lovely vibrato sound for the softer ranks (never used on the heavy sounds).

It was now about 10 pm, and everything was ready to start the boring, all night, task of recording.  I thought that someone would need to sit at the organ and play each pipe while Piotr listened with the headphones and made sure it was being recorded.  However, when he asked me help put it on, I learned that Piotr made a small device that he taped to his index finger (and later said he would put it on a toe) such that when he depressed an organ key, it activated the computer to do the recording. I thought this was quite ingenious.  He said he bought the device and programmed it to activate the computer.  Then Andrea and his men left and we helped Piotr turn off the lights, which never did put much light in the church.  He was anxious about using electricity.  He is going to have to go back during the day, when there is natural light, to take the pictures of the organ that he will put in the website and to make the console move when it is played. Hauptwerk organs on the (ideally touch sensitive) monitor typically show actual photos and the stops actually move and keys depress when they are played.

Piotr had a nice Apple laptop and a wonderful set of headphones. This shows the 4 channels of the surround sound in which he was recording.

Parting shot of Andrea Mascioni, owner of the company that made the organ, who wants me to be his US representative.  

Me with Piotr Grawboski.  He also took a pix with his iphone (selfie) with me and Myrna.  He is a professional sound recorder who plays the organ for a hobby.  I asked about his Hauptwerk organ, and he said it is just a couple of Casio keyboards and a pedalboard (like my set up), but he does not play it often because has a real pipe organ at his church to play. (He is religious--he knelt every time he went in front of the altar.)  He said, interestingly, that for him Hauptwerk is like being a fisherman who does not like to eat the fish--he likes to record organs but not play Hauptwerk organs.  I gave both him and Andrea Books of Mormon (Andrea in Italian and Piotr in Polish), in which I wrote personal notes, and LDS hymnbooks, Italian to Andrea and English to Piotr, whose English is very good. Actually, Andrea speaks very good English, and his wife is a professional organist.  He said she would like the hymn book. I asked Piotr if he had ever heard of the Mormon Tabernacle organ or choir, and he hadn't.  He said that he may be finished putting the organs on the website for download by about Sept. and I am anxious to download and play it, also the Mascioni organ at Giubilate, Switzerland he recorded the previous night.